Beautiful Central Oregon
 

I have a number of gorgeous shots with the A1 from a recent trip to Central Oregon. The shots include stunning sunsets with Three Sister Mountain range and Smith Rock.

I am going to splice together a 2 minute reel with a lot of variety. I captured the footage with Cineform's intermediate codec. All was shot at 30F (my personal favorite).

Anyway, the footage is a great way to evaluate a lot of what the camera can do and I am willing to make it available in the highest quality possible, but I need someone to host the file.

I posted a 1440x1080 Windows Media file that is pretty compressed. If anyone wants to host a higher resolution version, please let me know.

For now, this version is up at www.lyonfilms.com/test_1.html

Nice Footage. I'd be intersted in seeing a higher resolution version.

What was the music?

People on this forum are choosing such great music for their A1 footage samples.

Kinda cool.

The music is from the Gladiator soundtrack. If I remember, I think the track is "We are free" or something close to that.

Yeah, the footage looks just wonderful on my HD LCD in my office at the full resolution. The night footage turned out really nice, very low noise with the preset I used. Also, the camera seemed to do a great job of handling the sunset while retaining some detail in the dark, shadowy areas.

There were so many beautiful shots at the Smith Rock location, it was hard to just pick a few. The detail in the rocks, even those that are far away was surprising.

Devon,

Really nice work. I was impressed. I also shoot alot of nature / landscapes and it looks like our shooting/editing styles are similar. I am on the fence trying to decide what camera to move up to. I am torn between the HVX 200 and the A1. I have viewed nice footage from both. Most of what I shoot goes to DVD. Do you have an opinion.

Regards,

You've got mail!

I'm in a similar situation shooting nature footage. I Too was seriously considering the HVX and although I really like the concept of P2 media and an IT [tapeless] workflow I have reservations about shooting documentary style with the HVX.

I realize that there are hard drives that you can record to but I'm not sure the HVX is worth all of the additional expense, need for a computer to download the drive to and and overall more complexity compared to tape acquisition. Especially when you compare it to the quality of the images I have seen from the A1.

Before I saw any A1 footage I was sold on the HVX but now I'm probably going to go with the A1. I am waiting however to see the new Sony before making my purchase decision.

I saw some beautiful HVX footage at a festival in Chicago and became very interested in the camera, mainly because of the slomo capability. But the P2 thing wouldn't work for me--too expensive to have a DMD (Data Management Dude) and equipment on the crew and too time consuming, and expensive, for archiving the footage after the shoot. I decided to get a Z1, but then the A1 came out and I got it. After seeing the footage, I'm glad I went with it. The new Sony looks nice, but I didn't want 1/4" chips and the lens isn't wide enough for me.

Mark:

I imagine most of us are still authoring our files as standard def, and standard DVDs (I know I am). As a Canon XL2 user of 2 years, I can say that the A1 downrezed to SD looks better than my XL2. I capture using Cineform's Aspect HD codec, edit and then export full 1440x1080 via Movie>Export>Cineform. I then use TMPEGEnc (Tsunami) to create a DVD MPEG-2 at 720x480. Very easy work flow and looks MUCH better than using Adobe Media Encoder.

Chris Hurd: I am not sure how to check mail...I know it sounds silly, but where is the mail?

I sent an email to you (at the address you used when you registered here) with our media server upload account information. If you prefer that I re-send it to a different address, just contact me by email: chris at dvinfo dot net.

I enjoy the footage a lot. Nice work.

Thanks Devon,

I appreciate your comment. In your opinion how does the A1 hold up on fast motion scenes?

Regards

Chris: thanks, I now have the email and I will upload a much higher rez version after church.

Does anyone have good settings for Windows Media that will satisfy those who want to see the footage in higher rez?

Mark: the little bit of footage I've shot of quick moving objects seems fine. I shot a little of football and also a little of skiers. I just shot at 30F and upped the shutter speed to my liking. The motion looked fine to me and the still frames were quite sharp at the higher shutter speeds, even at just 1/90. Other than that input, I have not spent much time shooting fast moving objects.

Devon

I pulled down my link do to the high number of views, but I did upload a much higher rez version to Chris Hurd, so I imagine if there is interest he can make it available.

I can repost the current video you had up on my server until the higher resolution is online if you do not mind Devon.

Hi Devon, I'll have to ask you to please upload it again to a new location on our media server. Look for an email from me with the updated FTP folder info.

The high rez version is now up in the proper folder on Chris Hurd's sever. Hope this helps!

Thanks Devon --

The file is located at media.dvinfo.net/canonxh/bendoregonlarge.wmx

Download the file and save it to your local drive first, and the re-name the file, changing its extension from .wmx to .wmv -- then open and enjoy.

Aspect ratio..?
 

...lovely footage... shot in 16:9, presumably...?

However, when I play this back in either Quicktime or Windows Media player for the Mac, it shows it as 4:3. i.e. images are squished horizontally.
If I load the clip into a 16:9 FCP timeline, it looks correct.

Any idea what I need to tweak in Qt or WMP to get the correct aspect ratio view..?

Thx, Ross.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Shot in 16:9 and plays fine as a 16:9 Windows Media file on my computer (the exact file I uploaded). I have version 11, don't know if that matters or not. Maybe you need to exapand to fullscreen in WM?

Beautiful images - thank you for sharing!

I am quite irritated though by the vertical magenta lines on the right sides of the black trees, left side of the frame, first takes.
Is this chromatic aberration? If so - why only on the left side of the frame?

Best regards, Michael Mann

Devon, it's not a bad idea to encode in square pixels (1920x1080) as not all media players seem to pick up on the anamorphic pixel flag. No one should have platform issues with a square pixel format. Cool footy btw :-)

Aspect ratio
 

I'm running QT Pro (v7.1.3) and Windows Media Player (v9.0) both on a PowerMac . Seems that these versions do not grab that anamorphic flag... shame..
Rgds, Ross.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Dennis: very good point. So, all I do is encode the 1440x1080 (1.33) as an export of 1920x1080 (1.0 square pixels)? Will do from now on.

Aspect Ratio
 

This clip can also be seen in the appropriate width:height ratio on a Macintosh by viewing it with VLC video player and setting the Video Preference in VLC (under the Preference menu) to "Source Aspect Ratio" 16:9. I assume this would be true with VLC on a Windows-based computer as well.

Very nice footage indeed, Oregon seems to be a beautiful place and the photographic work is superb. The choice of music is also very tasteful, it complements the shot perfectly. You said that the music is from the Gladiator soundtrack, where can one licence this kind of music for such web distribution?

For the record: quicktime also shows the footage as 4x3 on my mac. To change that: open "movie properties", click on the video track, then "visual settings", unclick "preserve aspect ratio" and choose "1960 x 1080" as "scaled size".

Sorry, the 4:3 problem was addressed above. I guess some of the media players recognize the anamorphic flag and others don't. I know that Windows Media Player 11 plays it properly.